Digital XLR vs. Analog XLR - Balanced Cables

Kal - That's a tricky question since there is no parameters for cables at all (other than characteristic impedance - irrelevent for analog).

If you like sound of digital cable as IC then used it. I'm merely suggesting that you won't find good metal or fancy dielectric (like foamed teflon) there. Other way around, you might find IC that has close to 110 ohm or have DAC like Benchmark that ignores quality of the cable. By all means use it. It is also possible that differences are there but you don't hear it - even better because it saves a lot of money.

I tend to do things by the book. When it says digital cable I go to store and buy digital and not the analog cable.

Sometimes things are not audible because are masked by other factors and improving system is like peeling layers of pink from the pink sunglasses - you don't notice each single peel but eventually you'll get clear uncolored picture.

OK. IMHO, it is hard "to do things by the book" when there are are no definable parameters except characteristic impedance for digital and LC values suitable for the loads in both cases.

I tend to ignore the labels that manufacturers put on a cable unless they say what their reasons are for putting on that particular label. I do know that some have used the same cable/connector for digital and analog.

Kal

I don't see reason why any company would use oversized foamed teflon tubes and 99.9999999% pure copper in digital cable but if you say they do - I trust you.

Ckoffend - Purcell, being upsampling DAC (and not oversampling), most likely rejects jitter. Quality and type of cable might be not very important (it isn't with my Benchmark - also upsampling DAC).

The temporary cables that I have tried, to confirm that I am getting the full 24/192 upsampling sound very good. As I previously mentioned, to upconvert to this level, it is required that I used two balanced digital cables to handle the full bandwidth. DCS indicates that it is impossible to transmit this amount of bandwidth on either a Coax digital cable, a glass optical digital cable or a single balanced AES/EBU cable. I don't necessarily question this, but before spending a several hundred dollars per cable, I wanted to be sure that the two appropriate cables would actually deliver the required upsamping level I wanted to hear/test. Since I have plenty of balanced analog cables, I was just seeking a reasonable and fast opportunity to test.